xflow7

Not sure how many are familiar with the Grassroots Motorsports $2007 challenge. The premise is to have a competition for the best overall race car for no more than $2007 parts investment. It's been going on for a few years now. Anyway, some good friends of mine back in Cincinnati entered this year and ended up winning overall, taking the autocross, concours, and best engineered honors. The drag race normally held had to be scrapped due to rain that day (which was fine with them since it would probably have been their weakest event). They built a sucker car and paid homage to the Chapparal 2J, naming it the Cheapparal 2J2 . Here's a video of my friend, Cliff, talking about the car with some brief footage of the autocross: :cheers: Wish I was still in Cincinnati; I'd have loved to work on it with them. More info here: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/news/category/challenge/2007-challenge/

I also recommend sitting in various types to see what you think. Whether you think you fit or not is going to as much a matter of your preference as it is about dimensions. Strictly dimensionally, overall height is much less important than where your height is. Too much torso height will cause roll-bar height issues, too much leg length will cause knee/steering wheel problems Also, foot size is critical. Up to a 10 or 10 1/2 you can just about drive a regular-sized Caterham around town with normal shoes provided they're not too wide. For spirited driving, however, you'll want wrestling or driving shoes for sure. Above a 10 1/2, you pretty much have to wear special shoes to drive at all.

I don't really know. I did seem to find that wheel hop under acceleration on my Audi (totally different kettle of fish, I realize) improved when I increased air pressure. But, I'm not sure if that's applicable in this case.

This may be a long shot, but have you played with tire pressure at all?

That's terrific. My favorite part is when the interviewer asks, "Well wasn't this one built so the front won't fall off?" and nearly loses it.

Ahem...how dare you overlook the fire-breathing potency of an OHV 8-valve Pinto engine, featuring driveway lubrication?

Congrats, Mazda! I've been running Linux more or less exclusively for about 7 or 8 years. Most of that time has been on Slackware. Not absolutely everything works straight out of the box, and you have to pay a little attention to what peripherals are linux friendly, but you can do most anything you can on Windows and once you start to figure out where stuff is on the filesystem and start to become familiar with shell scripting, it's a hell of a lot easier to troubleshoot, IMO.

That's the one I remember seeing.

Someone at Lime Rock had mirrors that clamped onto his windscreen stanchions, but now I can't remember who it was.

I believe that's called a resistance heater.

For the most part I would have thought that as well. The stumbling block originally seemed to be a discrepancy about whether the existing number was acceptable. There's an additional nuance here, though, which is that one of the outcomes of the VIN inspection process needs to be a formal categorization of my car as a homebuilt/custom. This is what allows me to do state inspection without needing to plug into OBD-II, etc, etc. That normally occurs at the VIN inspection when they assign a NY VIN. However, in my case they didn't end up doing that, so it's unclear how things will proceed. I pressed the inspector about what should I expect to receive and he couldn't really tell me since in my situation they had: - already titled my car with that VIN, - then determined that they didn't like the number so sent me to VIN inspection, - then VIN inspection determined it WAS okay so didn't do anything. So, in principle I already have a title with the right VIN on it, but I don't know (and nobody seems to be able to tell me) how the car gets migrated into the Homebuilt category in the DMV's records. This appears to be a case where their system is set up fine to deal with a car built in NY, but is not good at dealing with a properly titled/registered homebuilt coming in from out of state. Since the fellow at Tech Services offered to try to run things down for me, I'll give him a couple of days, then I'll call the title people myself. Your inspection sounds very much like Ohio's. One inspection process to handle VIN and cursory check of the car; no inspection of DOT markings, etc. Here, you need to send in a form with all the markings on it, and what equipment it has and they may or may not demand an inspection of the DOT/safety equipment. In my case they haven't.

Very fortunate that didn't turn into a bigger problem. Working on my Seven has made me pretty good about disconnecting the battery when doing anything of note under the bonnet, but I admit it hasn't occurred to me to do it when fussing around with those interior trim panels. Think I will next time.

I know exactly what you're referring to. Pegasus used to carry them (and for a pretty reasonable price, IIRC), but I can't find them on their site anymore. Did you find they gave useful accuracy? I always figured they'd work okay on a softly sprung car but that on a stiffly sprung car, you would significantly alter the apparent corner weight by the time you lifted the wheel enough to unload the tire sidewall.

Hey! What's with the question mark in the article title? :toetap:

Well, between you and Skip, at least I don't feel alone in enduring arbitrary DMV inconsistencies.

Breaking News!!! Got a call today from Tech Services saying everything passed for roadworthiness, so I'm covered there. Now it's just a matter of sorting out what's going on with the VIN. They didn't give me any paperwork when I left the VIN inspection since the fellow told me they could use the Ohio VIN, but usually they give you paperwork that gets stamped by Tech Services to let you go register your car. So, without that VIN paperwork things are still kind of in limbo. The guy at tech services is a champ, though, and offered (unsolicited!) to go upstairs and rattle cages among the VIN folks to see what's going on. So, hopefully he'll be able to find out where things stand. Fingers crossed I'm on my way, though. :hurray:

I went through the VIN inspection 2 weeks ago which seemed to go pretty smoothly; the inspector informing me that they would be able to use the Ohio-assigned VIN from when it was built. Of course the Ohio-assigned VIN is just the Caterham VIN that Albany told me couldn't be used, but on an Ohio sticker. :crazy: I also finally sent all my pictures, documentation and stuff off to the Technical Services Bureau about a week ago for them to pore over Haven't heard back from either department yet, so not really sure what the status is.

Sounds great, and agreed about enjoying the weather. I did a nice blat out to Watkins Glen last Sunday (as in 10 days ago; before I knew about the Lotus trip this past weekend). 75 miles out, a nice walk up along the gorge and back down, a couple of laps around the historic GP circuit, dinner down at the lake and 75 miles back. Excellent. :hurray:

Frictional losses within the drivetrain should be wrapped up in the 15% losses number which leaves rolling resistance of the tire. IIRC, on a normal road surface, passenger tires typically have ~2% rolling resistance. Assuming a combined 600lbs on the rear tires gives 12lbs rolling resistance which, at 50mph I work out to be ~ 1.5 HP, so 12 1/2 HP still sounds high to me. Having said that, a dyno roller may well inflict considerably higher rolling resistance since the fact that it's cylindrical will cause more tire deflection. Also, now that I think about it, there could be an additional component due to the slip ratio of the tire in generating the tractive effort on the dyno roller. The slip ratio could be several % which would show up directly in the HP number if you're measuring roller speed and the wheel is actually spinning several % faster. If it's 5% slip ratio that would be 0.05*176HP=8.8HP, or 10.3HP for rolling resistance + slip ratio correction, so maybe that's where it comes from.

:iagree: Only thing I can think was it was intended to be a correction for some kind of ram effect, but even that doesn't hold; at 50mph you're talking a fraction of a percent of incremental air flow.

Cool! I had to chuckle at "7 DM" on the side. I have a hunch almost everyone who's autocrossed their Seven used that number. What are we going to do if we ever all autocross together? It'll be like a kids soccer game where everyone gets a trophy. What are you using for a powerplant?

I bet you could get it to shift that quick... ...once.

Seen that on BlatChat a while ago. That is what they typically call "autotesting" I believe. IMO, it is an amazing display of car control by the guys that are good at it. There are a couple of clips that were also posted on BC of a guy in a Mini or something that are amazing; the car just seems to float. Edit: Note that (in case it isn't obvious) the course is very specific including which direction the car is to traverse the gates; and precisely where to stop (the white line must be between the axles). I have to think aside from the driving skills, it must be very challenging to remember course.

aerodywhatnow?

Don't go out of your way. I can call up a local place here and ask myself. I just figured I'd try to mooch off of any information you happened to already have.